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The magnitude of British Columbia’s energy boom is hard to gauge in a city like Vancouver, where job-growth statistics and billion-dollar announcements can get lost amid the glassy towers and bustle of urban daily life.

But in the tiny village of Xa’xtsa, a six-and-a-half-hour drive from Vancouver at the north end of Harrison Lake, the boom has been a total game-changer.

After enduring more than a decade of economic hard times after jobs in the forest dried up, members of the remote Douglas First Nation community are in the midst of a powerful transformation generated by several run-of-river projects on their reserve and throughout their traditional territory.

They now have reliable electricity. They have high-speed Internet. And, more importantly, they have work.

Employment rates have soared in the community since 2006, when the first deals were struck between the Douglas band and independent power producers to begin construction work on six hydro projects.

At the height of development, virtually anyone who could handle a broom was earning a paycheque as a camp cleaner, labourer or cook to an outside workforce of about 400 people. Others trained as heavy-duty equipment operators and power-plant operators to meet the vast labour demands, both now and in the future.

“I think, prior to the projects starting, the majority of people in our community were on social assistance,” said Chief Don Harris of the projects’ far-reaching effects.

“After, there were three on social assistance: One disabled [person] and two elders,” he said.

The Xa’xtsa experience may be dramatic, but it’s not unique.

Between natural gas drilling in the north, development of B.C.’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) export trade, and construction of new electricity generation to power much of it, energy is among B.C.’s biggest growth sectors.

Many communities across the province are already feeling the profound impacts of the boom, with many more bracing for the punch.

Among the big questions on everybody’s lips is just who will fill the thousands of jobs — the majority requiring trades training — that are expected to open up in the coming years?

It’s an issue that’s prompted much discussion and no lack of genuine concern among decision-makers across the province, from politicians, employers and labour leaders to first nations and post-secondary school administrators and trainers.

“There is, without a question of a doubt, a skilled trades shortage coming up,” said Trevor Williams, dean of energy at the B.C. Institute of Technology.

Shale gas fields

If you want to know where most of the jobs are right now, you have to run your finger up the map to B.C.’s northeast, where an estimated 14,000 people are directly employed in the shale gas fields outside of Fort Nelson and Fort St. John.

Pipefitters, power engineers, machinists, welders, truck drivers, mechanics, electricians and millwrights are among the dozens of trades in hot demand across the region, with employers facing stiff competition from not just each other, but also neighbouring mining, industrial construction and hydroelectric operations to secure the trained workforce they need to support the work that is happening.

Over the next five years, another 1,000 to 2,000 openings are anticipated in connection with expanded natural gas exploration and products required to supply new LNG projects, with thousands more jobs created by the construction and operation of clean energy projects that will power them, the Ministry of Energy of Mines reported in its natural gas strategy paper.

Meanwhile, construction on BC Hydro’s Site C dam on the Peace River, east of Fort St. John, is due to break ground in 2014 and open up an estimated 35,000 direct and indirect jobs.

In B.C.’s northwest region, an unprecedented boom fuelled by up to $25 billion of resources investments over the next decade is also expected to intensify the skills shortage.

More than 32,500 person-years of jobs are anticipated through the development and construction stages, leaving anywhere from 2,000 to 5,000 operational jobs in their wake, according to a report commissioned by BC Hydro in 2011.

The pressure has the province scrambling to tap into labour markets that have traditionally been under-represented in the trades.

British Columbia’s young and growing aboriginal population has become a critical element in the province’s Jobs Plan and B.C. Energy Plan.

So, too, is the engagement of more women and immigrants in the trades.

“You’ve got to do what you can to fully utilize the skilled workers that are here and attract and retain them, and we haven’t always done that consistently in our industry,” said Cheryl Knight, CEO of the Petroleum Human Resources Council of Canada, a Calgary-based industry group tasked with finding solutions to the skills shortage in the country’s oil and gas sector, of which B.C. has a seven-per-cent stake.

According to the PHRC, B.C.’s current population distribution is the biggest impediment to addressing the skills shortage.

Namely, while the jobs are in the north, the majority of population is in the south.

Companies are already flying in the employees they need to work at remote camps from centres such as Kelowna, Vancouver and Kamloops. But Knight said there is equal emphasis in current recruitment efforts to encourage families to relocate permanently to the more remote regions, with tempting offers of competitive salaries, cheaper housing prices and outdoor recreation.

“There is a lot of discussion going on because [the companies] are very, very concerned about the challenges in getting skilled workers to northeast B.C. right now and, later, to the northwest,” said Knight.

Training priority

At the BCIT campus in Burnaby, there’s no shortage of students eager to train in the in-demand trades, with some of the most popular programs drawing lengthy waiting lists.

“We are full in everything,” said Williams.

The province has identified new skills training as a priority, and Williams said B.C.’s trades schools are doing all they can to get more people job-ready as fast as possible.

That effort includes a possible expansion to current training models beyond the apprenticeship system, which has suffered a decline in both the total number of apprentices in the system and completion of training since 2008.

“We call it front-end loading, which means we’re providing the training before employment,” Williams said of new models under consideration.

“We’ve been doing it for years, but it is just the scale, probably, that needs to be ramped up.”

Williams said many BCIT graduates end up working in the north, lured by salaries of up to $100,000 a year.

“People will go where the work is,” he said.

Knight said B.C. can learn valuable lessons from Alberta, home to 81 per cent of the country’s oil and gas production and where as many as 140,000 skilled workers will be needed over the next decade.

*Start recruitment early: “When you need people, it is too late.”

* Use a variety of work arrangements: “Flexibility opens up the opportunities for different types of people.”

* Look to other parts of Canada: “Unemployment is not the same across the country.”

Above all, Knight said, it’s important for decision-makers to remember that attracting and retaining people in a boom is always challenging.

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